One of the toughest hurdles anyone can come by is self-doubt. A gripping fear that leads to a torturous cycle of questioning whether or not you’re good enough, whether or not you should just give up.

I’m not a stranger to self-doubt. In fact, it might as well be the closest companion to my heart. I doubt so many things about myself ranging from my abilities of being a good friend to whether or not I’ll ever be a good writer. The worst thing about self-doubt? It doesn’t just go away, you have to actively challenge it like you would a bully. You have to face it, and stop letting it scare you, stop letting it take advantage of your weakness.

I lost my ability to write essays and papers because of self-doubt. I would stare at the empty Word document and panic. All the information I knew, all the knowledge I had would just vanish as soon as I saw the cursor blinking in front of me. What do I do? Where do I start?

And when I fail to put a single word on the page, I feel the self-doubt eating at me more. It confirms that no, I cannot write a proper paper anymore. I almost gave up writing in general because of my self-doubt. I almost gave up poetry, fiction, and academic writing. I just couldn’t handle it… no matter how much others believed in me, I couldn’t see past my own insecurities.

I was only able to move past it because I decided that I would give it a shot again. I wanted to see if writing was a fluke for me. As soon as I pushed past the hurdle of self-doubt, I didn’t care about whether or not my writing was good enough, I was just happy I was writing again. And since, I’ve been continuing to encourage myself–refusing to give up my passion because of fear.